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He pauses. “Yes. All my family. The protection around the castle was breached. You know that thing we talked about? I think it’s happening.”
“What does that mean?” Abaddon demands, clearly making no pretense of not listening in.
Layden holds up a hand and shoots a glare over his shoulder at his brother before his voice turns soft again. “Okay. We’re headed there now. If you could call ahead so they know to expect us, it’d be appreciated. Call Sabra, too.” If possible, his voice gets even gentler when he says, “See you soon.”
Abaddon’s arms are crossed over his chest by the time Layden pushes several more buttons and then stands up, turning toward us.
“Shouldn’t you be flying?” Kharon demands.
“It’s on autopilot.”
“Explain yourself,” Abaddon barks.
“Autopilot is—”
“Not that,” Abaddon growls impatiently. “Who were you speaking to? Why the hell do you think going to a nest of vampires is a good idea? And what is this thing you anticipated that is finally happening?”
“I’ve been seeing some weird stuff online.” Layden sighs. “Not just me. Some of my hacker friends have noticed, too. It’s why I don’t think it will be just Russia after us.”
At his brothers’ blank stares, Layden hefts out a breath. It’s calming to just observe the brothers through what I absently realize is some sort of shock. “On my computers. There’s weird shit going on in the code. I only got a glimpse of it in the Russian government security site I was hacking before I realized they were coming after us—”
Abaddon waves a hand impatiently. “What do we care about the humans’ little technologies?”
“We care,” Layden says emphatically, “because I saw angelic runes amidst the code.”
This has everyone shutting up.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
Layden shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I mean, I’ve been tempted to use runework with my algorithms before but never dared.”
“Why?” This from Hannah.
Layden laughs. “Are you kidding? Human AI has enough dangerous capability to outlearn the humans who engineered it. How fast would the singularity happen if the technology could learn and feed off of angel tech?”
“Our runes are not tech,” Kharon says.
Layden rolls his eyes. “Sure they are. Runes are an advanced form of energy and mathematical code far beyond the understanding of this plane of existence. But if they could learn it, or their machines could. . .”
“So wait,” Hannah says. She’s obviously been around all this craziness more because she’s taking it in much more stride than me. “You’re saying that some other angel did what you didn’t and fed runes into the AI, and now we’ve got an angelic AI about to take over the world?”
“Oh no,” Layden laughs. “I doubt we’ve gotten that far yet. That’s just a worst possible scenario.”
“Then what the hell are you even talking about?” Abaddon explodes. “And remind me again why we are heading to the vampires?”
“Because there are angel runes in some of the code, mostly government code so far. And not just the Russians, either. I didn’t have much time to look, but it’s out there. I don’t think it’s the AI on its own. I’m telling you, there’s an angel out there trying to fuck with us. And it’s savvy and using every available modern warfare method to find and track us. It’s not all cannons and swords anymore, big brother.”
Abaddon rocks back on his feet, looking dumbfounded.
Sitting beside me, I can’t help but notice Remus’s eyes glittering. Is he. . . excited by these developments? My stomach knots. They are talking about war. And from what everyone always says, that’s kind of his whole deal, isn’t it? Maybe his past isn’t as much in the past as I want to pretend.
“Who?” Kharon demands. He’s finally handed his daughter to Ksenia since the helicopter has righted, and she’s nursing her.
Layden throws his hands up in the air. “Your guess is as good as mine. I didn’t think there were any more of our kind left on this plane. Got any more siblings you’ve pissed off and buried alive while I was away?”
“Are you ever going to let that go?” Abaddon growls. “You know we are the last of our kind.”
“Unlesssss,” Remus says slowly, drawing out the last word, something like a smile on his face, “Unless Father did something when he got dropped back into the Great Hall by brother dearest.” He nods toward Layden. That silences everyone. “Surely you don’t think Daddy would have gone down without a fight? He could have sent back something or someone as a present for his misbehaving sons.”
